


Paramnesia

by madnessiseverything



Series: narnia x tma [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Crossover, Family Loss, Gen, Implied Child Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Loss, Mild Blood, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), knowledge of either fandom is not essential to understanding, mentions of Tim and Sasha, my narnia works generally play in a rough mix of movies and books just so you know, references various events throughout the chronicles, vaguely set in s1 of tma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26632255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessiseverything/pseuds/madnessiseverything
Summary: Statement of Susan Pevensie, regarding the gradual loss of her siblings. Original statement given May 15th, 1949. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.the one where something else finds the Pevensies during their time in the country.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Series: narnia x tma [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937485
Comments: 17
Kudos: 94





	Paramnesia

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a thing i've finally gotten the courage to post! i know i've hinted at it before, and here we finally got the first piece of this au :D massive thanks to my wonderfully encouraging betas, you were all such a joy <3

Statement of Susan Pevensie, regarding the gradual loss of her siblings. Original statement given May 15th, 1949. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

“Before I begin, I must warn you that recently, my memory has started waning. I understand if this makes you less inclined to believe my words, but I beg that you give me the benefit of the doubt. I have heard many things about this institute, not all very flattering I will admit, but I’ve been reassured that my story is the sort that falls into your area of expertise. I’ve little doubt that my memory loss is tied directly to the events that have plagued my siblings and me for the past decade, events that have begun slipping away from me. And while I always retain a healthy amount of scepticism when it comes to the supernatural, I have run out of other explanations for my family’s afflictions.

I have three siblings. Well, I had three. I had two brothers, one older by the name of Peter, and one younger called Edmund. And Lucy, my sister, is the youngest out of us four. We used to do everything together before the war. We would spend hours playing. We played tig, climbed trees or did anything else young kids would get up to. When our father had to leave for the front, our playing turned into Peter and I needing to help Mother with the household. It strained our relationships. Particularly with Edmund, who grew to resent us. He always accused Peter of trying to replace Father.

Peter had just turned thirteen when the Blitz began in 1940; I had been twelve for two months. We were so young. Our mother sent us away to the country during the London evacuation efforts. She wanted us safe, away from the war. We were put on a train and sent to Professor Digory Kirke’s house out in Cornwall. If she had known what would become of us there, I don’t know if she would have chosen differently. I do sometimes wonder if dying from a bomb would have been the kinder option —if losing us like that would have been better for her. Not that it matters much now, I suppose.

The house was massive and not built for children at all, full of artefacts that we were to keep far away from. Peter was ecstatic. He was confident that we would be able to do whatever we wanted in a place that large. Lucy was very homesick, and Edmund continued to keep himself separate. The professor was a kind old man, though he was very odd. We didn’t see much of him at all. I suppose he must have been quite busy, we only really saw him at mealtimes. 

It was raining the day that it all went wrong. Lucy was desperate to do something, anything in the empty house. We had taken to just sitting around, everyone doing their own thing. She hated it; we all knew. Edmund was in a particularly beastly mood that day, and Peter was trying to keep us all happy. I think Lucy instigated a game of hide-and-seek, or maybe we were simply exploring. I do remember that it all started with the spare room that we accidentally opened. You see, we found our share of locked doors on our trip through the halls, and even now where I remember little of the day, this particular door had felt like one that should have been locked. But it wasn’t.

It was a simple room; mostly empty, very dusty, with two windows that created an illusion of open space and something covered by a white sheet on the other side. As soon as I entered, I knew that we had made a terrible mistake. I still remember the feeling now, despite my mind having been robbed of so much else. It was freezing. My body felt weighted down; like lead had settled into every part of it. I didn’t want to move ever again. It felt as though the very concept of joy and human life was foreign to this room. Like we had walked into a space built to remove happiness from its inhabitants. I know that my siblings responded as I did. I remember the confusion and fear on their faces. None of us attempted to leave, though. I still wonder why we didn’t, if it was the terror that paralysed us or if we tried but found the door locked. I know we didn’t leave that room for a long time. And I know that it is the reason why I lost them. That room, whatever it was, it took the siblings I knew from me. It turned us all into someone unrecognisable and took them away.

I have dreams, sometimes, that I know must be more than simple dreams. I would call them memories, were they not so distant. Often it feels like I am witnessing them through a fog or a windowpane, almost like they do not belong to me. Yet I am there to see it all.

In these dreams, there is a woman. She is beautiful and incredibly cold. She is destructive, though I don’t know how I know that. Edmund likes her very much but hates us all the more for it. She takes him away from us, no matter how hard I scream. Peter has a sword of some sort and is drenched in blood. He screams as well, a wordless yell every time. He never responds to me talking to him. I know they can’t hear me, but I always try. And Lucy, she is the odd one out. She is never as beastly and enchanted as Edmund, or as terrifying and lost as Peter. She laughs. It’s the worst part of these dreams, to hear her giggle as I watch our brothers disappear into the fog. I don’t think she is laughing at them. But I can never find out what she sees or does. There is only her laugh. When I wake up, my hands are red with the chill, and my ears ring. I find it hard to look at Lucy in the morning. I do wonder if these dreams are what happened in the room. Logically, I know that it can’t be; the room had no other doors for people to disappear through. At least I don’t think it did. I only remember one. 

Somehow, we must have gotten back out. I have no memories of the rest of our stay. I remember that after a while, we went back to London. We moved back into our family’s house, but things never went back to normal. Lucy didn’t remember our mother at first. Edmund refused to be touched even more than he used to and would dig into anything that hurt us. Peter’s temper was horrible, even though he used to be the hardest to anger. And I often felt like a ghost inhabiting long-dead rooms. I know Mother noticed that something was horribly wrong, but what could she have done? She had welcomed four strangers that looked like her children into her home, had continued to care for us as she knew best. I overheard her speaking to one of her friends a few weeks after we had come back. They talked about how the country changes the children, how the war doesn’t spare a single soul. Don’t get me wrong; the war was horrific and strained our family terribly. Our father leaving for the front fractured the household before the country ever ruined us. But it wasn’t the war that made my siblings go wrong, of that I am sure. Mother couldn’t possibly understand. None of us could even bear to think of it, much less tell her. Nowadays, I find myself wishing we told her. Maybe then I would be able to ask her what happened, what it was that found us. 

When we went back to boarding school, I think Mother hoped it would set us right. It didn’t. Our schools sent out many letters that made her worry worse if her letters to me were any indication. Peter and Edmund were in quite a few fights with their schoolmates, Lucy and I heard as much. Lucy paid little attention to school work and was caught out for daydreaming and other odd behaviour. I lost all of my previous school friends. I remember thinking that they couldn’t possibly understand how I felt, though I don’t know what exactly my feelings were then.

We lost Edmund in April 1941, when the four of us met up outside of school. We had been fighting, as we were so prone to do. It must have been about our stay in the country, it always was, yet I cannot recall much of what was said. I remember Peter’s fury and Edmund screaming that he wished we would suffer. Peter had always been terrible at getting Edmund to calm down, especially those last years. Usually, whatever he said only made Edmund angrier. Lucy tried to get between them, but for once, Peter didn’t even spare her a glance. He was too worked up. I remember yelling at them. I don’t think whatever I said was helping; I always found a way to make it all worse. Edmund ran away before we could tire of the argument. Once Peter managed to calm down, we realised that Edmund hadn’t gone back to the boys’ dormitory like we thought when he first ran off. We spent hours looking for him, but he hadn’t gone to any of his favourite spots in the city either. It was getting dark when Lucy broke down and started talking about how “the witch” got to him, how she must have spelt him. Neither Peter nor I knew what she meant, but I remember thinking about my dreams when she said it. 

Edmund never showed back up. Lucy had horrible nightmares for weeks, where she would wake up screaming her entire hall awake. She told me about them, but the words always slipped away from me as soon as she was done. It terrified me that I could not get my mind to hold on. It upset Lucy even more, and she stopped coming to me. I didn’t ask either. I know that I should have; she was so afraid. I should have been there for her. But there was nothing I could do if I couldn’t even understand her words. I didn’t wish to upset us both when I inevitably forgot what she said. My lack of memory gave me my own nightmares soon enough. I would be alone in them, without those visions of my siblings or the strange woman. The fog would still be there though, surrounding me and clinging to me like it was alive; like it wanted to seep into my skin and make me a part of it. Then I would find statues, people frozen in the middle of simple actions. They would be everywhere, pressing in. I didn’t wake up my classmates as Lucy did, but I always woke up crying. 

A month after Edmund’s disappearance there was a big news story that everyone was talking about. The police had found a lot of blood at the house of one Jadis Charn after a neighbour of hers called them with a noise complaint. Ms Charn was nowhere to be found, and neither was any source of the blood. The night after, the house was destroyed completely. It looked like a single bomb had found that exact spot without catching any others. My classmates were avid gossipers and stories about Ms Charn were quickly circulating, each one worse than the previous. I heard one of the younger girls say that Ms Charn was often called a witch by the neighbourhood children. Now, that is something that I should have brushed off as quickly as I did with all the other horror stories that started flying about. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. I started looking into the story more and found pictures of Ms Charn. I’m sure it comes as no surprise when I tell you that it was the woman from my dreams, the one that Edmund would follow. Lucy came to me with the same dreadful conclusion. Somehow, Edmund had found his way into Jadis Charn’s hands, and she had done something to him. Our brother is dead. Of that, I am still sure today, even if they never found his body. And whoever Jadis Charn is or was, she took him from us. She killed our brother. 

Of course, neither of us ever dared to tell our parents. We had no evidence and even if they believed us: Jadis Charn was just as gone as Edmund was. When Edmund wasn’t found, they declared him dead on their own. Father, home from the war because of an injury, was adamant that waiting around would only make things worse for our family.

We hadn’t even had the funeral when Peter began to go really wrong. He was so angry all the time. He was always looking for Edmund and neglected everything else. He refused to believe our brother was dead and became obsessed with finding out the “truth”. He wouldn’t listen to us. One day, shortly after Edmund’s funeral, we found him in an alley behind the library. He had blood on his hands. Lucy and I couldn’t get him to stop talking, but what he said was all nonsense. The only coherent sentences were about saving Edmund from something. We didn’t find whoever he had hurt; they were nowhere near the library at least. You must understand, my older brother always hated violence, and he was just fifteen, what damage could a fifteen-year-old do? It didn’t stop him from seeking that violence out; we learned that when it happened again and again.

Soon enough, Lucy and I knew that we would lose him to this obsession. And as months turned into a year and then two, it only got worse. He came home with injuries more and more, or worse still without injuries but with other people’s blood on his clothes or skin. On March 24th, 1944, we found Peter collapsed in the rain outside of our house. He was covered in blood. At first, I was afraid that he was dead. But Lucy managed to wake him up, and we got him into the bathroom without Mother noticing. We helped him get warm and cleaned up. The entire time, he was crying. We had just gotten him into the bathtub when he started begging for our forgiveness. He wouldn’t tell us what he had done, what we should forgive him for. We said we did, of course. He was our brother, and he was in such distress, I think I would have done anything to get him to breathe normally again.

Two days later, he was gone, just like Edmund. I tried finding him on my own, but I never dared go to the police in fear of them figuring out whatever it was that he did. I suppose we should have told them about it all a long time ago, but somehow it never crossed our minds. Something always held us back, be it fear or love for our brother. Our parents never found out either. I couldn’t bear telling them; Peter always had been their golden child. Maybe they deliberately didn’t notice his going wrong. I couldn’t be the one to ruin their lives even more. Eventually, we held another funeral, with another empty coffin. 

Mother and Father tried hard to remain strong for Lucy and me, but the toll of losing their sons has made them afraid of the same happening to us. And the worst of it is that I cannot find it in myself to try and connect to them these days, to be of any sort of help to them. It feels as though there is a barrier between them and us, ever since Father left for war and Mother sent us away. Sometimes it feels as though I haven’t known them in years. Three years ago, when I turned 18, I insisted on moving out and found a flat on the other side of London. Lucy was determined to move in with me. Our parents didn’t want her to, but she refused to stay. I think she feels the same distance from them. Mother and Father blame it on her being a teenager, at least out loud. They never speak of the disconnect between us, but they must know it’s there as well. 

Lucy started talking to the wardrobe two weeks ago, though she says she has been doing it since we went out to the country back in 1940. I don’t remember buying the wardrobe, nor why we got it in the first place. It’s so big I can hardly imagine how we even got it into the flat. But as I’ve said, my memories have been fickle, so I’ve learned to move on whenever it fails me. Three nights ago, I woke up to the sound of the three creaking floorboards outside our bedroom. Lucy’s bed was empty. I could have written it off as her getting a drink or going to the bathroom, but I couldn’t stop shaking. I got up to take a look and found Lucy in our living room. She was deaf to my asking her if she was feeling alright. She stood in front of the wardrobe without moving. 

And I felt it again - the very same horrible feeling that I felt when we all entered that room in the Professor’s house. My limbs were heavy, and I wanted to cry. I wished to grab Lucy and shake her, but the thought of moving felt like it was beyond anything I could ever do again. Then Lucy laid down in front of the wardrobe and fell asleep. It took me several minutes to make my way to her despite the room’s small size. She wouldn’t wake up. She was alive, breathing as she would any night of the week. I cried myself to sleep next to her. I don’t think she has much longer. I’m certain that whatever or whoever got our brothers will get her too, somehow. She will disappear and die. And then I will be alone. It’s why I came here, to your institute. I don’t know what you can do; if you can stop Lucy from disappearing, if you can help us get closure on our brothers’ deaths or if you just catalogue these strange happenings for academic purposes. But I had to do something. I had to tell someone.

I want my family back. I know that’s not possible. Peter and Edmund are long dead. It doesn’t stop me from wishing they would walk right out of the void and back into our lives like this was all a nightmare. The gaps in my memory terrify me. There are answers in those things that I’ve forgotten, answers that I would give anything for. But I’m scared I will only continue to lose more. I don’t wish to forget anything else. The flat is getting colder, and Lucy says there is a whole other world in our wardrobe, a world without the cold, without this constant feeling of dread and the empty space Edmund and Peter left behind. I worry she will step right in and leave me the only one alive. Sometimes I feel like she’s already gone. Her mind certainly has.”

Statement ends.

This family cuts quite the tragic figure I have to admit. I would be inclined to write this off as a distraught woman looking for reasons for her family’s suffering, but my academic responsibility refuses to let this one rest due to some of the details. And while the lack of definite descriptions of whatever the room contained is frustrating, at least Ms Pevensie was self-aware enough to warn us. I assume any therapist would have extensive thoughts on trauma and coping mechanisms for her.

Moving onto the things that we do know. There are graves for all six members of the Pevensie family at the East Finchley cemetery - that being the four children and their parents. Edmund Pevensie’s body has to this day not been found and Jadis Charn, the woman Ms Pevensie accused of being connected to the disappearance of her younger brother, completely vanished from public records at the same time as he did. Sasha found Ms Charn mentioned in another statement, given in 1900, which confirms Ms Pevensie’s feelings about her being quite the destructive figure. She was responsible for some significant property damage in East London and, according to the statement giver, was strong enough to dismantle a lamppost and wield it as a weapon. Even still, the statement provides no information about her whereabouts or connections to the Pevensies. 

A bloodied shirt belonging to Peter Pevensie was discovered in a field near Liskeard but, mirroring his brother, his body was not recovered, and no suspect was apprehended. Lucy Pevensie was reported as missing on July 19th in 1949 by Susan Pevensie. Unlike her brothers, Lucy Pevensie left nothing behind. Susan Pevensie herself disappeared about a year and a half after making this statement. Like her siblings, she was never found, and Mr and Mrs Pevensie held two more funerals for the last of their four children. 

The parents themselves died in a train crash in 1953. There are still living relatives, with the name of Scrubb. Tim went out to talk to them, but they seem to have little remaining feelings on the Pevensies. Apparently, they have been estranged for a couple of generations. One of them did mention that their grandmother Alberta used to say that someone must have had it out for them and that she was quite glad not to be close to them. Strained familial relations aside, there were no further leads.

The country house mentioned used to belong to the Theology Professor Digory Kirke before he fell on hard times and lost it. He died in 1949, leaving behind some not insignificant debts. However, the house is still an active tourism site, run by the Macready family. Our investigations show that there have been no disappearances linked to the house itself, and outside of the Pevensies’ story nobody has reported any trouble. It leads me to suspect that while Ms Pevensie blamed the room, whoever is responsible for this was really only attached to the family itself.

The wardrobe was still in the flat previously owned by Ms Pevensie, albeit covered up and forgotten about by any residents who have lived there since. The institute has purchased it, and it is now in Artifact Storage. While I doubt that Lucy Pevensie will step out of it, the staff has been made aware of the possibility. 

Recording ends.

**Author's Note:**

> this might be one of my most edited pieces yet, honestly. i really love this au and boy, was i anxious about posting this. i hope you enjoyed it <3 i'm also in these places if you wanna have a chat about this fic, narnia, tma or anything really: [tma tumblr](https://extinctioniscoming.tumblr.com/), [narnia tumblr](https://bloodybigwardrobe.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/notanycritter)


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